Seeing pictures in your head isn't just a metaphor - while most people have mental imagery, a small number of people with aphantasia do not experience these mental pictures. If you think you might be one of them, we'd love to hear from you!
We are looking to recruit healthy people with aphantasia (exceptionally weak or no visual mental imagery) aged 18-45 years for a research study: Brainwaves in Types of Thought. We are interested in exploring different formats of thought and their underlying neural mechanisms, and whether this differs between people with aphantasia and people with visual mental imagery.
Now:
If you think you might have aphantasia and are interested in participating in our research, please fill our brief eligibility checker linked below. Once you have completed this, a researcher will be in touch to let you know if you can participate. If you can, you will receive a short questionnaire to assess where you lie on the spectrum of mental imagery.
The Study:
Subject to the eligibility checker, you will be invited to participate in our research study on campus. This consists of some questionnaires, a short pen and paper task, and a main computer-based task. This will take around 2 hours and you will be paid £20 cash as a thank you for your participation.
The computer task begins with you resting while we record EEG. For the main task, we ask you to hold a cue in mind over a short delay, and then judge whether the cue matches a later picture, while we record EEG.
What is EEG?
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a type of neuroimaging technique which measures the electrical activity of the brain. This involves the non-invasive placement on small sensors on the scalp with the aid of a hypoallergenic conductive gel. Setting you up with the EEG equipment will take approximately 45 minutes of the total allocated study time.
Questions?
If you have any questions please contact the lead researcher Stephanie Hartgen-Walker at stephanie.hartgen@plymouth.ac.uk. If you know someone who might be aphantasic, please feel free to pass this information or email address along to them!
Survey link here.